School’s in, football’s on, the holiday catalogs are starting to arrive and Mark Lennan is pulling on his work boots. Q4 is boom time for this Colorado custom retailer, a project manager at Custom Audio Video in Minturn, Colorado, a small town which sits, serendipitously, between two of the most affluent winter vacation areas in America: Vail and Beaver Creek.

“Most of my customers are only here for a few weeks a year,” says Lennan. “They have complex home control systems that they’re used to, so my job is to keep things simple in the [chateau].”

Simple doesn’t mean cheap. Lennan’s done good business with Crestron, AMX and Niles products. He says about 90% of his customers are among the 1% wealthiest people in America, but he’s looking to expand his clientele to include some more middle-income and year-round residents. “There are just so many options to offer people now in a home,” he says. “You can do Cat 5, you can do optical, and now wireless is starting up. Remotes are getting smaller, and interfaces are easier.”

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